Welcome to Skullcrusher Mountain
by ChristineX
Summary: The thrilling tale of a mad scientist and his not entirely unwilling captive, complete with henchmen, a secret lair...and a ponkey. Based on the Jonathan Coulton song.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: This novella was inspired by Jonathan Coulton's amazing mad-scientist-in-love song, "Skullcrusher Mountain." Jonathan Coulton releases all his material under an Attribution/Non-Commercial Creative Commons license, which makes fan-derived works like this one possible. _

I

Of all the ways Jenna Masterson had thought her day might end, none had included being slung over the shoulder of some monstrous, hairy…well, she supposed she'd call him a man for now, since she wasn't sure what else he could be. He walked on two legs, had two arms and a head and features roughly where they were supposed to be, but after that any similarity to any man she'd ever known before came to a screeching halt.

She hadn't had much opportunity for anything more than a quick disbelieving stare before he'd grabbed her and thrown her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Her camera had gone one way and her digital recorder another, and her purse was probably still rolling down the side of the mountain. Not that she'd had anything more threatening in there than a half used-up tube of Rum Raisin lipstick.

Maybe if she'd listened to Old Henry down at the drugstore, she wouldn't be in this mess. He'd tried to warn her, but of course she hadn't listened.

"You'll want to stay off Skullcrusher," he'd said as he handed her a bag containing the lip balm and bug repellent she'd just purchased.

"Off what?" she asked, blinking at him. Was he psychic? How had he known that she was buying the bug repellent in preparation for an exploratory trip up the side of the mountain?

She hadn't been in Plainfield very long, and she supposed he might be pulling her leg. Then again, Old Henry (everyone seemed to call him that, from her landlady to the barrista at Starbucks…trust Starbucks to have an outlet even here in the boonies) didn't seem to be exactly the joking type. She'd seen cheerier expressions on Basset hounds.

"Skullcrusher Mountain."

Jenna had taken the bag from him and raised her eyebrows. "You mean Black's Peak?" It was the only place within twenty miles of Plainfield that deserved to be called a mountain, although back in Southern California it would have hardly rated a second glance.

He made a noise deep in his throat that might've been a chuckle. Then again, he could have just been fighting with a particularly belligerent piece of phlegm. "That's what it says on the map, but it's Skullcrusher. Just stay away, and you'll do fine."

At the time she'd thought maybe Old Henry was a decade or so past retirement and talking dementia-induced nonsense, but now she knew better. There was a reason he'd called this place Skullcrusher. God knows she was getting a headache right now, what with the way her skull kept knocking into the unknown Neanderthal's shoulder blade with every enormous step he took.

She couldn't really tell where they were headed, as her best view at the moment was of the hard-packed dirt and pine needles underfoot, and even that sight was diminishing rapidly. It had been well past five when she'd turned to put her camera away. The sun had been hovering just a few degrees above the horizon, and she'd known enough to realize that needed to get back to her car before dark. Not that she'd had the chance, as her captor had grabbed her just as she'd begun to unclasp the messenger bag she used to carry the camera and its spare batteries and one of the little notepads she took with her everywhere.

Now dusk was just about to give way to full dark — no shilly-shallying around with long, blood-tinged, smoggy sunsets out here; no, nighttime fell in a brisk and businesslike fashion, as no–nonsense as the rest of Plainfield's residents. By now she should have been safely back in the little two-bedroom house she was renting on the west side of town. Instead, she was being hauled steadily upward by the Missing Link…or at least its long-lost cousin.

Because they definitely were climbing, on and on into an increasingly dark night. The surveyor maps she'd looked at back in the newspaper offices pegged Skullcrusher Mountain — Black's Peak, that is — at 3,677 feet, which would have classified it as a foothill in her native Southern California. But here, climbing up out of the flat plain that had given the town its name, it looked, well, mountainous.

Not tall enough to deter the ambulatory hulk who had snatched her. How he was able to see in the dark, she had no idea; the sun was gone, and the moon not due out for some hours, but he moved steadily, with no missteps or stumbles. She supposed she should be grateful for that. All the head-bobbing was painful enough without factoring a trip over a tree root or a gopher hole into the equation.

If they even had gophers up here, of course.

She'd tried screaming when he first snatched her, on the off chance there might be some hikers or thrill-seeking teenagers roaming around in the woods. The Missing Link's cousin hadn't even bothered to tell her to shut up, and after a few minutes of turning her throat into the vocal equivalent of chopped sirloin, she realized he'd let her scream because there was in fact no one around to hear her. Ever since that moment of clarity, the journey up the mountainside had passed in silence.

And it was quiet up here…too quiet. Shouldn't she have been hearing the first owls, or sounds of some sorts of creatures in the forest? People in Plainfield had warned her about wolves, saying that the packs had been coming west out of Yellowstone for years. Not that she was really looking forward to a run-in with a bunch of possibly rabid wild canines, but at least a wolf call or two would have reassured her that she and her captor weren't the only living things on the whole mountain.

Then the Neanderthal slowed to a stop. She heard grinding metal and twisted around, trying to peer past the mass of his deltoids to see what had finally halted his steady upward climb. A reddish light flowed out of an opening in the mountainside. She blinked. Were those torches?

"Not yet," he said, the first words he had spoken since he seized her. A large ham-like fist descended, and everything went black.

* * *

She was exquisite. The best yet. She lay on the cot where Scarface had placed her, hair a fiery mass against the pillow. Her lashes formed two dark crescents against her cheeks. He knew it was necessary for Scarface to knock the women out before they were brought in here, and yet he wished she were awake.

He wondered what color her eyes were. Blue? Green? He supposed he would know soon enough.

Scarface lingered to one side, watching. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck and said, "She's a screamer, Master."

His tone was too flat to be construed as overtly critical, but it still required some rebuke. "You say that about all of them."

"It's because they all scream."

He knew there was no arguing with that statement. Yes, he supposed that someone taken off her guard might scream when confronted by as imposing a specimen as Scarface. But of course he wouldn't admit that Scarface was right; doing so would only be a sign of weakness.

With some effort he turned away from his latest captive. Although he would have liked nothing more than to wait there until she awoke, he knew it would be some time before she regained consciousness. Scarface could bring her to him when the time came. It was always better to have the women come to him in the laboratory, where they could be properly impressed by their surroundings.

"I'll be in my lab," he said, and left without bothering to wait for Scarface's nod. His assistant knew what to do.

As did he.

* * *

The last time she'd felt this craptastic had been after a night of drinking tequila shots at El Coyote with that photographer from _Newsweek_. Jenna pressed a hand against her throbbing forehead and forced herself to open her eyes.

A stone ceiling met her aching gaze. The light in here was odd — yellowish orange, with a strange flickering quality. Torches?

Stifling a groan, she sat up and took a quick glance around. No, not torches, but sconces which emitted illumination that at first glance appeared to be from candles but was far brighter. She forced her shaking legs over the edge of the cot and stood, then stumbled the few feet to the barred wall that enclosed the space where she'd been left. One of those odd sconces was only a few feet away. By standing on her tiptoes, she could just see inside. It held a rectangular element, from which the not-candlelight emerged. It did waver the way a candle would, but the pulses were too regular, as if the device had been programmed to imitate a flickering flame but had fallen just a little short on the verisimilitude factor.

"The Master invented those," came a deep, almost familiar voice, and she whirled. The Neanderthal stood a few feet away from the bars of her cage.

His appearance did not improve on closer inspection. Now she could see the horrible scars that crisscrossed his face, turning his features into the world's most frightening topological map. What the hell had happened to him — tragic incident with a threshing machine when he was a boy?

"The Master?" she echoed.

"I will bring you to him now." From somewhere within the enormous shapeless coat he wore he pulled out a set of keys, one of which he stuck into the lock of her cell.

For one wild second Jenna entertained the idea of rushing him, taking him off-guard while the cell door was barely open, and fleeing into the night. Then she took a second look at the length of his arms and guessed he could probably grab her before she got two feet. She sighed. So much for heroics.

Meekly, she stepped out of the cell and allowed him to guide her down a short corridor and then up a long, winding flight of stairs. She noticed that the steps beneath her feet, the walls around her, and even the roof above were all carved out of dark-gray granite. Maybe she'd watched too many James Bond movies with her dad when she was a kid, but the place looked just like the secret lair of some super-villain.

Which two hours ago she would have said was impossible and crazy, but who else but a complete whack-job would live in the guts of a mountain and employ someone who looked like the Missing Link to do his dirty work?

"Who's the Master?" she asked, the words sounding a little breathless even to her. Apparently, all the stair-climbing machines in the world couldn't quite prepare a person for the endless stairways inside Black's Peak. Her head pounded in time with each step, and she wondered whether she dared ask for some ibuprofen.

"You'll see."

That sounded ominous. She tried to imagine what kind of man would have the _cojones_ to boss someone like the Hulk here around, got a few mash-ups that fell somewhere between Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader, and gave up. Unfortunately, sheprobably would know soon enough. At last the stairs ended, and they emerged in a long, wide hallway. More of the sconces lit this area. From somewhere off in the distance she thought she heard male voices, but she saw no one. Not that anyone roaming around in here would be likely to help her out. Besides, while unnecessary heroics sometimes got you on the five o'clock news, they could also lead to you being messily dead. She'd rather wait and see how things shook out.

The hallway ended in a pair of riveted steel doors. Her captor paused and placed his thumb on what appeared to be a state-of-the-art biometric scanner on the wall to their right, and the doors swung inward.

Beyond the doors was a room that could have been cobbled together from every mad scientists' wet dream from the dawn of black and white horror movies. Banks of equipment whose purpose she couldn't even guess at thrummed and pulsed with strange light. Some kind of generator hummed off in a corner. Rows and rows of glass vials and jars — some filled with unpleasantly proportioned specimens — filled an enormous stack of shelves off to her left. And was that a Tesla coil arcing and sparking over there to the right?

In the midst of all this Hollywood scene-setting doesn't this need a hyphen? Scene-setting? stood a tall man in a white lab coat. His back was to the door, but he turned as Jenna and her jailer approached.

As mad scientists went, he could have been much worse. He definitely needed a haircut, and his nose was long and beaky and his eyes partially obscured by a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, but even so, she'd had worse blind dates.

"Welcome to Skullcrusher Mountain," he said. He smiled as he spoke, although there was something off about his expression, as if he really didn't have much practice smiling at people.

Despite everything, she had the overwhelming urge to burst out laughing. This had to be a joke, right? At any moment someone was going to bust out the cameras and Ashton Kutcher was going to be laughing in her face, flashing that goofy grin of his.

Then again, that stupid show had been cancelled awhile ago, hadn't it?

She crossed her arms. "The map says this is Black's Peak."

The mad scientist's smile slipped a fraction of an inch. He glanced past her to his henchman. "Scarface, leave us."

The Neanderthal nodded and then retreated out the door they'd come in through. Jenna didn't know if she should be relieved or worried that he'd been dismissed in such a summary fashion. And "Scarface"? Really? Nice way to keep throwing the guy's disfigurement right back in his, well, face.

"I am Dr. Black," the mad scientist told her. "This mountain has always belonged to my family."

"Convenient. Were they in the kidnapping business, too?"

"Kidnapping?"

"Well, that's usually what they call it when you grab someone and forcibly spirit her away to a secret mountain fortress."

He tilted his head to one side. She couldn't be entirely certain, because the light from the Tesla coil kept bouncing off his glasses, but she thought she saw his eyes narrow. "I prefer to refer to it as 'collecting.'"

A little surprised at her own boldness, she said, "Call it whatever you want, but I'm pretty sure it's still a federal crime even around here."

His smile reasserted itself. "Perhaps, but I don't recognize your government."

Great. So not only was he some kind of mad scientist with a yen for redheads, but he also sounded like some kind of Libertarian Tea Party nut-job. They were the kind who invariably wrote massive ten-page letters to the editor of the newspaper as to exactly why the federal income tax was illegal and why they had the right to declare himself a sovereign state and free of any obligation to the United States of America. And now she was stuck inside a mountain with one of them.

She shot a surreptitious glance around the lab but didn't see any signs of stockpiled weapons or tinfoil hats. Not that that meant anything.

"I'm sure the local branch of the FBI would find that fascinating, Dr. Black. I'm guessing they'd be willing to give you a good amount of time to explain your position — something like five to ten years, probably."

No reaction. He didn't even blink. Either he honestly didn't think he'd done anything wrong, or he was so far around the bend that the prospect of an extended stay in federal prison didn't bother him a bit.

"Dinner?" he asked.

He hadn't blinked, but she did. "Um…what?"

"It's time for dinner. If you would join me?"

And he honest-to-God held out his hand to her. Jenna stared back at him for a few seconds, once again struggling against that incongruous desire to erupt into hysterical laughter. What would he do if she refused?

But she had no doubt that he was crazy, and she'd always read it wasn't wise to upset a crazy person…especially one who appeared to have her completely in his power.

So she took a step forward, and then another, and laid her hand on top of his.

* * *

This one seemed to be smarter than the others. Not, of course, possessing an intellect anything close to his, but her apparent lack of fear and the pithy comments she'd delivered during their first encounter told him that she was a definite cut above the specimens Scarface had collected in the past.

Now she sat at the table across from him, looking quite beautiful in the reflected glow of the lamps despite her disheveled hair and stained clothing and the faint bruise on her forehead. Scarface tried to pull his punches when he could, but even the lightest of his blows always left some sort of mark.

As soon as she'd been brought here, he'd given the order for a fine meal to be prepared. Luckily, one of his henchmen had proved to be a much better cook than he was brute muscle, and dinners of late had been uniformly excellent. This meal, though, had to be a cut above even that. He wanted to make a good first impression.

This time, things would be different.

Scarface had carefully gathered up her scattered belongings and brought them to him, and so he knew that his latest catch was named Jenna Masterson, that she must not have been in the area for very long because she still had a California driver's license, and that, according to the press card she carried in her wallet, she now worked for the Plainfield _Bugle_. A reporter, which would explain all the questions.

She held up a piece of meat speared on a fork and inquired, "What is this?"

"Prime rib."

"You get prime rib on Skullcrusher Mountain?"

He met her gaze. She'd answered at least one of his questions; her eyes were gray-blue, like storm clouds. "I can get anything I want here."

That seemed to unnerve her a bit. She glanced away and put the piece of prime rib in her mouth and chewed deliberately. Then she lifted the glass of wine next to her plate and took a swallow. "That includes Bordeaux, apparently."

"Of course."

Normally he didn't drink very much, but the prime rib called out for a worthy companion, and he thought the wine might reassure her a bit. After all, that was what people did, wasn't it — had dinner with wine and conversation?

He couldn't be entirely sure, as his previous captives had spent most of their time screaming, not engaging in polite dinner chitchat. What a waste of roast goose the last one had been. He hadn't even bothered to break out the wine for her

But he had a good feeling about this Jenna. She seemed to be made of sterner stuff. He thought she might do very well. He hoped so, for her sake.

"So how do you do it?" she asked.

"Do what?"

She paused and regarded him carefully. Her features might have appeared delicate in repose — soft, even — but when she was awake her chin had a certain forthrightness that spelled possible trouble ahead. "Live in a mountain and do apparently whatever you want. No one notices?"

"People notice what they want to." He did not think it necessary to indulge in confidences, not in this, their first encounter.

"Hmm." She lifted the wine glass and drank, giving a little nod at the end that could have meant anything. Approval of the wine, possibly, or perhaps a simple acknowledgment that he was the one in charge and therefore didn't have to give any responses he didn't want to. Then, "Old Henry told me to stay away from Skullcrusher."

Not surprising. It had been Henry Larkin's daughter who had gone missing all those years ago, who —

He reached for his own wineglass. No point in thinking of her laugh, silenced for more than twenty-five years now. He'd never dared ask his father what had happened to her, but he knew.

"Do you have a first name, Dr. Black?"

Jenna Masterson was staring at him, one eyebrow lifted slightly. He gazed back at her, nonplussed.

"Well, seeing as you were nice enough to invite me over and break out the good wine, I thought we might as well be on a first-name basis."

Impossible that she could be teasing him, but he thought he detected a certain glint in her eyes. Still, he would concede that she had a point. Giving her his name might advance a certain intimacy between them.

"Theophilus."

She made a slight choking sound, then swallowed a bit of Bordeaux. After one final cough, she replied, "Really? Is that a family name?"

He had no idea. It was the name his father had given him. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Theo," she said, as though testing out the word.

No one had ever called him that, not even his mother. But somehow he found he liked the sound of it on Jenna's lips. Yes, he would allow her to use the nickname.

"Is that better?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is."


	2. Chapter 2

Wow, I actually got some reviews! (You never know when you're doing something kind of obscure. Okay, really obscure.) Thanks for reading!

II

Somehow she managed to survive the dinner. Actually, the food was very good, rivaling meals she'd had in the best restaurants in Los Angeles, New Orleans, or New York. As for the setting and the company —

Well, he hadn't killed her yet, and appeared to be putting on what he probably thought of as his "company face." In other circumstances, Jenna might have even called him…well, maybe not charming, but definitely not the worst dinner companion she'd ever had. No, that honor still belonged to the asshole who'd worked for _Maxim_ and who had informed her quite seriously that women were inferior intellectually to men because their brains were smaller. Jesus Christ.

After a crème brulée so lush it could have been prepared table-side at Antoine's, Theophilus Black told her, "I must excuse myself — I have work I must attend to."

She didn't dare ask what that "work" might entail, but she did assay a smile and reply, "Then I suppose it's back to my cell for me."

"Oh, no," he said at once, in tones of shock that might even have been genuine. She didn't know him well enough to guess one way or the other. "That was only temporary. I had to be sure — " He broke off, then continued, "That is, I have an apartment waiting for you. Scarface will take you there."

An apartment. That didn't sound too threatening. Unless, of course, he planned to join her there later. She measured him carefully from beneath her eyelashes. _Could_ she force herself to sleep with him? If given a choice between sex with Theophilus Black and certain death, well, the answer seemed pretty obvious. He wasn't going to win any beauty contests, but at least he had an interesting face and looked clean enough.

Jenna hated herself for thinking such a thing, but really, while there might be worse things on this planet than death, sex with the reclusive scientist probably wasn't one of them.

After all, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been Scarface.

She repressed a shudder, and told herself not to borrow trouble. True, it didn't seem likely that this Dr. Black had kidnapped her just because he wanted a dinner companion, but you never knew. He seemed just crazy enough that he might have done that very thing.

"Great," she managed by way of reply to his comment, and then pushed herself away from the table and stood. They'd eaten dinner in a room two hallways down from the laboratory. The place was decorated in early Hammer horror film, what with its pseudo-medieval heavy carved furniture and drapes of gloomy plum velvet at the window. Not that it was a real window — from what she could tell, the muddy stained glass only opened out on more rock, but at least some attempt had been made to have the chamber appear to be a real room and not just another space carved out of the mountain's guts.

The doors to the dining room opened, and Scarface entered. Jenna could have thought of a lot of other things she'd rather see on a full stomach, but she didn't have much of a choice. Theophilus Black nodded at her and departed, leaving her to stand there and try to pretend that she wasn't really avoiding looking at Scarface.

If he noticed her averted eyes, he didn't let on. "This way," he said simply, and led her out of the dining room.

It was a little easier to look at him from the back, although even his shoulders appeared somehow misshapen, one slightly higher than the other but both still enormous, like two mismatched mountain peaks. As he mounted yet another of those agonizingly endless staircases, she tried to pay attention to where they were going and how they got there. The dining room had been at the end of a short hallway, and this staircase was about fifteen paces away from its entrance. The stairway had three landings, all of which appeared to branch off into additional corridors. And when they reached the fourth landing, it was another fifty feet and three doorways before Scarface stopped in front of a door, one that had another of those biometric thumbprint devices set into the stone wall next to it.

What she was going to do with all this information, she really didn't know, but she figured it might come in handy. Maybe there would be some chance to escape, one moment where they wouldn't be watching her closely. If she made a run for it, then knowing how many landings it took to get back to the dining-hall level might help.

_Yeah, right. Because from there it'll be so easy to find my way back to the front door._

She couldn't even shake her head at herself, because at that moment Scarface placed his thumb on the scanner, and then opened the door. He didn't move, but said only, "Go in."

At least he didn't seem inclined to go in with her. Jenna stepped into the room. A second later, the door shut behind her. Automatically, she reached out and touched the doorknob, but of course it didn't budge. What had she expected?

Okay, so she was still a prisoner, but her cell had gotten a lot bigger. The apartment in which she stood appeared to be about the size of a large hotel suite; through one door she could see the bedroom, and her current location was the middle of a good-sized sitting room. She wondered if Theophilus Black or one of his predecessors had picked up all the furnishings in Skullcrusher Mountain at a Hammer Studios fire sale; the same heavy faux-medieval pieces filled the space, although here the drapes around the bogus windows were a dark blood-red. More of the odd flicker lights gleamed from wall sconces, although a pair of matched table lamps with crimson glass shades had also been turned on. They gave off a depressingly sanguine light.

"Cheery," she said, and headed toward the bedroom, where she was greeted with more of the same. The large four-poster bed with its dark-red hangings looked as if its last occupant might have been the Marquis de Sade.

But at least it was a real bed. When she gave the heavy damask bedspread an experimental pull, it revealed simple white sheets that looked and smelled clean, and the bathroom that adjoined the bedchamber was also clean and presentable enough, with polished stone floors and walls and a complicated massaging spa shower head.

In fact, what it reminded her of was the bathroom in the suite she and Larry had once rented at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, where all of the rooms had different themes. Theirs had been the "Caveman," as she recalled, with a rock shower not too dissimilar from the one she was looking at now.

Of course, thinking about Larry was a bad idea, because then she also thought about how things had ended, and how it was his fault that she was out here in Montana at all. Thanks, Larry.

Well, maybe that wasn't completely true. She'd been stupid. Rule number one — don't sleep with the boss. Rule number two — don't sleep with a married man. And she'd managed to break both those rules in one easy step. Yes, he'd told her he was separated (oldest one in the book), but she still should have known better.

When she'd been looking for an escape, Montana had seemed like a pretty good idea. Montana was nice and far away from Los Angeles. And in a time when newspapers were folding right and left, the _Bugle_ still did okay for itself — mostly because broadband still hadn't reached a lot of these hinterlands, and people wanted to read a paper to get their news.

If someone had told her a year ago that she'd be able to survive on approximately half her former salary, she would have laughed in their face, but it was a lot easier to get by in a place where you could rent a two-bedroom house for about six hundred bucks a month. Hell, she'd had friends back in Southern California with bigger car payments than that.

The problem with Montana and Plainfield, though, was Skullcrusher. If she'd stayed in L.A., she wouldn't be currently locked up by a mad scientist with henchmen who seemed to have no moral qualms over "collecting" young women. Assuming Theophilus Black was even a real scientist. All those machines in the lab could have been just for show, although Scarface had made that comment about his master inventing the little glow cubes that seemed to be ubiquitous here.

She'd been poking around on Black's Peak because her editor let her come up with her own story ideas in between the times she wasn't writing up dull reports on City Council meetings and even duller articles about next year's agricultural forecasts. No sensational murders or high-profile divorces here; it was an exciting week if she got to cover both a wedding and a funeral. So much for that Pulitzer.

At any rate, Black's Peak had interested her, not only because it was such a commanding geographical feature compared to the flat lands around it, but also because no one ever seemed to talk about it. Roads went around the mountain, but none went up it. Jenna a native of an area where pretty much every patch of wilderness had its hiking trails or nature walks or campgrounds, thought that seemed more than a little odd. She'd thought it might be a good idea to take a look around and see what it was about Black's Peak that made it so different.

"Well, now you know, Brenda Starr," she said aloud, and reached out to test the taps on the vanity. They both seemed to work fine (better than fine; she got hot water here a lot faster than she did in her own house). Further inspection of the drawers revealed a new tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush still in its wrapper. She also located a bar of soap and some unscented deodorant — apparently Dr. Black liked his women clean — but that was it in terms of toiletries. Maybe mad scientists didn't believe in moisturizing.

What she really didn't want to think about was how creepy it felt to know that he'd prepared for her arrival…or at least the arrival of some other victim. Jenna forced herself to take a deep breath and went back out to the bedroom, where she performed a similar inspection of the dresser drawers. She found a plain white cotton sleeveless nightgown and several packages of white cotton underwear in various sizes, all still in its packaging. Maybe Theophilus Black had never heard of Victoria's Secret…or maybe he just had a fetish for women in white undies.

_Okay, let's not go there_, she told herself. It was going to be hard enough to fall asleep in these surroundings even without torturing herself over Black's sexual predilections.

She also found her purse tucked inside one of the dresser drawers. The wallet appeared to have been rifled through, although nothing had been taken. And her Rum Raisin lipstick seemed to have come along for the ride. But her cell phone was gone, as were her car keys and her nail file. Nice precaution, but she couldn't have picked even a real lock with the thing, let alone the thumbprint scan device on this door. Likewise with the cell phone; even if AT&T decided to cooperate for once, there was no way her phone could have possibly gotten a signal inside the bowels of this mountain.

Black hadn't provided for any entertainment — no books or magazines, no iPad loaded with music and movies, so there wasn't much left for her to do except wash her face with that horrible soap, brush her teeth, and put on the nightgown. She discovered that the wall sconces could be turned on and off by simply pressing a button concealed within their bases, so she did that before climbing into bed and extinguishing the lamp on her bedside table.

It wasn't completely dark; she'd left one sconce in the main room on as a sort of night light. Otherwise, the blackness would have been complete, what with the apartment's complete lack of any outside illumination. She wondered how Theophilus Black could stand being shut up in this place all the time, with no hint of sunlight or fresh air. Then again, for all she knew, he had some kind of penthouse carved out of the top of the mountain where he could see everything for miles and miles. At this point, she would believe just about anything.

But while the darkness was not absolute, the silence was. She heard only her heart beating, and her breath as it moved in and out of her lungs. Since moving to Montana Jenna had become more accustomed to quiet, but even in her small house on the outskirts of Plainfield she would still hear the occasional car, or the neighbor's cat meowing to be let in, or the ceaseless chirping of crickets. Here there was nothing.

She'd never been much of one for crying, not even when she'd seen her dreams of a successful career in Los Angeles crumble. No, she'd packed her bags and forced herself not to look back, and the hell with Larry Waters and the lies he'd told.

But now painful prickles of heat began somewhere beneath her eyelids and she swallowed, hard. She wouldn't. She would not cry. The hell with that.

She wouldn't give Theophilus Black the satisfaction.

* * *

Theophilus found himself wishing he hadn't sent her away, although at the time it had seemed like a good idea. Better to give her just a little taste of his company, just enough to show her that he meant her no harm. Besides, he had the notion that if he gave off the impression of having a number of very important tasks to do, and that she was just one item in a very busy schedule, perhaps she would be intrigued and want to learn more about him.

But she hadn't appeared all that disappointed to be relieved of his company, so perhaps that hadn't been the best strategy. And now he found himself sitting in the lab and staring at a jar of monkey brains, and wanting to hear the sound of her voice again.

It was a little lower than the voices of the local girls Scarface had taken, somehow throaty and sweet at the same time. He liked it; when he listened to her talk, her voice drowned out the whispering ones that seemed to always linger at the edges of his mind. Her voice matched the autumn-colored fall of her hair and the fullness of her mouth.

That mouth. He'd tried not to stare at it during dinner, but he'd found it difficult. He'd never seen a woman with richly curved lips like that, lips that had the faintest shadow of a quirk at their corners, as if she were constantly smiling at some secret joke.

He wondered if she was asleep yet, and what she looked like in the white nightgown he'd provided for her, with her hair spread out over the pillow. Wondered what it would be like to lie in bed next to her and hear her breathing and watch her breasts rise and fall as she slept.

A part of his anatomy told him that sounded like a wonderful idea, but he ignored it. All things in their time. If he tried to enter her room now, she probably would scream, and loudly.

He hated it when they screamed.

And really, things seemed to be going quite well. She had sat at the dinner table and eaten her meal while looking quite unruffled, if rather pale. Not like that one blonde girl who had kept crying and who'd made so many attempts to run for the door that one of his henchmen had had to tie her to her chair.

Theophilus had instructed Scarface not to collect any more blondes after that.

At any rate, rushing things never helped anyone. His father had impressed that upon him during all the hours they'd spent together in the lab, all the times they'd toiled away at the unending experiments designed to make Theophilus a worthy heir to Skullcrusher. Slow and steady, and always keep a watchful eye on the subject of your experiment.

"Master?"

He started, and then glanced away from the jar of monkey brains to see Scarface standing a few paces from the lab stool where he sat. The henchman could move with impressive stealth when he wanted to.

"What?" Theophilus snapped.

"Miss Masterson's vehicle."

"Her what?"

"A 2008 Jeep Wrangler, to be precise."

"What about it?"

"Should I dispose of it?"

He supposed he should have thought of that sooner. Then again, the last two girls had been taken as they were hiking in the woods a few miles from the base of the mountain, and so they'd left no vehicles behind as markers of their disappearance.

Scowling, he replied, "Yes, of course. Push it off a cliff or into a river or something."

"Very good, Master," said Scarface, and left.

The frown did not leave Theophilus' brow, however. He stared at the closed door through which Scarface had just disappeared and then shook his head. Sloppy. By now the vehicle would have been abandoned for some five or six hours. What if someone had seen it?

Not likely, of course. Although no true roads led up the mountainside, there were a few fire trails that wandered around the lower shoulders of Skullcrusher's slopes. He guessed Jenna Masterson had taken her Jeep there, abandoning it only when the fire road ran out. A newcomer, she probably hadn't known that no one ever traveled those trails. Or perhaps, being a reporter, she had ignored warnings to stay away.

Well, the problematic Jeep would be taken care of soon enough. A tributary of the Yellowstone River flowed not too far from the base of the mountain; Theophilus guessed Scarface would push the vehicle into the fast-moving water — after taking care to remove the license plates, the VIN tag from the interior, the serial number from the engine block, and any personal belongings Jenna might have left behind. The river moved fast, and even if the Jeep wasn't swept away with the current, it would be buried soon enough by the snows of winter.

And really, he was lucky to have a woman with him now who wasn't a native of the area, who had no real ties to Plainfield or anyone in it. Possibly her place of work might note her absence, but after all, she was from Los Angeles. With any luck, the few people who might be inclined to ask questions would think she had had enough of Montana and had simply returned to California.

Theophilus Black felt his frown relax into a smile. The world would forget Jenna Masterson soon enough.

He would just have to make sure that she forgot it as well.


	3. Chapter 3

III

Jenna opened her eyes. She stared up at the dark hangings overhead and blinked a few times. It would have been nice if she could have forgotten where she was, but no such luck. She recognized the Dracula-inspired decor at once.

She had no idea how many hours had passed. Apparently Theophilus Black didn't believe in clocks, either; there were none in her apartment. But she had the impression a good amount of time had gone by. Her headache had gone as well, although the spot on her forehead where Scarface whomped her still throbbed a little when she reached up to touch it. Good thing he hadn't given her a concussion.

She would've liked to blame her hours of dreamless sleep on Scarface's blow but knew it probably had more to do with the two glasses of Bordeaux she'd drunk with dinner. Black might be a madman, but he kept a pretty good cellar. That stuff had been strong.

Since she didn't have anything better to do, she crawled out of bed, grabbed some of the clean underwear that had been left for her, and indulged herself in a long, hot shower. The bathroom door did have a lock, so at least she didn't have to worry about her captor or his henchman walking in on her when she was naked. And terrible as the shampoo and soap might have been, it still felt awfully good to get clean. A hot shower cured a variety of ills.

Her post-shower regime was depressingly short, lacking as it did a blow dryer, moisturizer, or any makeup. She blotted her hair as dry as she could with a towel and grimly put on some lipstick, wanting it for its moisturizing properties more than because she really thought it would do much to improve her looks. Besides, at the moment she really didn't give a good crap what kind of impression she might make. And since she hadn't been left any clean clothes, she had to climb back into her jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, which had a new rip in the hem. Lovely. At least her dark green leather jacket seemed to have survived the kidnapping without any real damage.

She had no way of knowing how long she'd be left to sit alone here in her room, so she switched on both the bedside lamps and retrieved her purse. Theophilus Black had also left her the little notepad and pen she carried everywhere, and that was something. Maybe organizing her thoughts wasn't the best use of her time — maybe she'd be better off trying to short-circuit that thumbprint lock or something — but she'd knew she'd go crazy if she just sat here and stared at the walls.

Notepad clutched in one hand, she climbed back up on the bed and sat there cross-legged, then started scratching away with her pen. She often did this sort of thing when she was brainstorming an article or just wanted to free-associate information she might use later on. Sometimes it helped to let her thoughts go where they wanted.

It seemed fairly obvious to her that she wasn't Dr. Black's first "guest," but she wondered how many young women had been spirited away here. What sort of power did he hold over the people of Plainfield to have earned their complicit silence? You'd think someone would have called in the FBI or at least the state police if the local sheriff wasn't to be trusted, but it seemed that no one had said or done anything to prevent Theophilus Black from claiming his victims. Did he, in true mad scientist fashion, have some way of destroying the town?

Jenna frowned, wrote a question mark, and circled it several times. Logic suggested that Homeland Security or the NSA might be interested in an individual who owned a whole mountain and apparently had the capacity to zip an entire town's collective lips, but it seemed as if Theophilus Black had been able to continue with his kidnappings and experiments and what-have-you without anyone on the outside taking notice.

And where had he come from, anyway? Had he bought the mountain? Or maybe been born here? If that were the case, then she wondered who his father had been, and his mother. Another captive?

A little shiver passed over her then. Maybe that was Black wanted — a mother for the next generation of little Blacks.

He'd definitely picked the wrong woman for that. Jenna prided herself on not having a maternal bone in her body. She'd spent too much time watching her mother sacrifice her own happiness to make sure her daughter wanted for nothing in the years following Jenna's father's death. Kids didn't have any place in her future — it was something Larry had always liked about her. Of course he did, the asshole. Nothing more convenient than a mistress who didn't want to play house. Anyway, as she'd gotten the Mirena implant a little more than a year ago, despite her doctor's objections that it was really intended for women who'd had at least one child already, Theophilus Black was shit out of luck when it came to impregnating her, unless he was hiding a gynecologist somewhere on the mountain

Scowling, Jenna tore off the sheet of paper she'd been scribbling on and crunched it into a hard little ball before shoving it into her jacket pocket. Not that Scarface couldn't search her pockets with impunity if ordered to do so, but somehow hiding her frenzied musings helped her feel a little bit less helpless.

She stared down at the torn edge of her T-shirt for a long moment and grinned suddenly. Then she picked up her pen and began scratching out a list.

* * *

Theophilus waited until nine o'clock the next morning before he had her brought to him in the lab. While he had been up far earlier than that, he didn't know whether his guest was a late sleeper or not. Apparently not; Scarface reported that she was awake and dressed and appeared to have been that way for some time.

An important piece of information, one that Theophilus filed away against future use. When Jenna entered the lab, she looked rested, clean and scrubbed and with her hair waving against her shoulders instead of lying sleek and straight as it had the day before. He thought he liked her better this way.

She waited until Scarface had gone and the door had closed behind him. A little ghost-smile touching her mouth, she stepped forward, hand extended with a piece of white paper held between her thumb and forefinger.

"What's this?" Theophilus inquired. Despite his best efforts to prevent it from doing so, his forehead wrinkled in a frown.

"A list of demands," she said, her lips still curving with that faint hint of a smile. "Requests, if you prefer."

He repeated, "Requests?" even as he unfolded the piece of paper and began to scan its contents.

She had very clear block printing, clean as an architect's. So he was able to make out the words without much difficulty, but their contents mystified him.

"Dermalogica Calming Cleanser, Sheer Moisture, Enjoy Sulfate-Free Moisturizing Shampoo — " He broke off and stared at her in consternation. "What on earth is this?"

"Just the necessities of life," she replied calmly. "Be glad I'm not addicted to La Mer like some of my friends back in L.A. That stuff is a hundred and fifty bucks an ounce."

"You can't be serious."

She didn't blink. "If you're planning on keeping me here for some time, then you can at least show me the courtesy of letting me take care of myself the way I'm used to."

The smile faded slightly, and she crossed her arms and stared up at him, one eyebrow lifted in an expectant arch. He found himself admiring her technique even while he groped for some way to reply without showing her how much she had discomfited him. After a second or two he decided that a counterattack was probably the best response. The voices were mysteriously silent; perhaps they were as confounded by this Jenna Masterson as he was.

"And how on earth did you procure these items in Plainfield?" he demanded.

"Little thing called the Internet. You have heard of that, haven't you?"

"Of course," he said at once, stung.

"If you don't have it up here, you could have Scarface go into town and use a computer at the library — "

He cut her off, wounded pride spurring him to say, "I do have an Internet connection. And multiple firewalls, and IP masking, so don't bother hoping anyone could track you down by using it."

The precautions had all been his; it had been easy enough to read up on the requirements for setting up a secure installation and then having all the necessary components delivered to a blind postal drop in Billings, the closest big city. One of his more nondescript-looking henchmen handled all such pickups.

The smallest flicker of irritation passed over her features, but then she smiled again. "I'd never think any such a thing. Your computer?"

"Follow me." He led her over to the closest workstation and pressed a button on the remote he kept in his lab coat's pocket. A flat screen raised itself up out of the desktop, while a tray containing the computer's keyboard extended itself from beneath the desk's surface.

"Slick," Jenna commented. "Very Star Trek."

He didn't bother to ask her what that meant, but instead moved past her to enter his access code and bring up a browser window. Then he stepped back. "Go ahead and place your order."

"Maybe we should have Scarface go fetch my credit card — "

"Now you are being ridiculous," he said. "Do you think I can't afford a few face creams?"

She lifted her hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay. But I'm going to need some new clothes, too — "

"Just do it!" he snapped, then wished he could have taken the words back. It would never do to let her see she could make him lose control so easily.

If his outburst had unnerved her, she didn't show it. "No problem, Theo." She turned back to the screen and navigated to a site that appeared to cater to every possible beauty need a woman could have, filled her shopping cart with an alarming number of items, and then paused when she got to the payment screen.

The total was slightly staggering, but he had more money than he knew what to do with. He leaned past her to type in his false name and the address of the mail drop in Billings, along with one of his credit card numbers. He from inhaled deeply so he could drink in the scent of her hair as he bent past her. How could the products she was ordering manage to smell any more delicious than that?

"Theodore White?" she asked, reading the name off the screen.

He gathered himself enough to reply, "Pseudonyms are a necessary component of my operation, Miss Masterson."

"Of course they are."

And with that she returned her attention to the keyboard and visited another site, this one selling clothing. At least it appeared that she was purchasing practical items — trousers and shirts and sweaters and flat shoes. Even so, the total from this site was even more impressive. He held back a sigh as he handed over his payment information once again.

"Anything else?" he inquired. Somehow he managed to keep his tone neutral.

"I think so. I hope you don't mind that I asked for express delivery — "

"Of course not. Far be it from me to prevent you from receiving your moisturizers in a timely manner."

In response she tilted her head to look at him. The smile had disappeared for the moment, but her eyes had a certain mischievous sparkle. "I have to say that you're definitely the nicest mad scientist I've ever met."

"I am not mad," he said automatically.

She rose from her chair. "If you say so."

For the barest second she remained standing there, so close that all he had to do was reach out and pull her toward him. Perhaps she wouldn't have even resisted.

But then she stepped away, and the moment was lost. The pang that surfaced somewhere between his fourth and fifth ribs on the left side might have been regret…or maybe it was relief.

He didn't know for sure. All he could do was watch her as she moved off a few paces and paused in the center of the lab's main floor. She sniffed once, twice, and then the eyebrow went up again.

"Is that French roast?"

* * *

So okay, a mad scientist with deep pockets, a decent wine cellar, and access to crazy-good coffee. Maybe she'd have to revise revise? her opinion of Skullcrusher Mountain and the odd Dr. Black.

Not that she was willing to give herself over for a killer cup of French roast and a couple grand of clothes from J. Crew and a few hundred bucks' worth of beauty products, but still, if he were all that evil, would he have acquiesced to her demands without so much as batting an eye? Okay, maybe his eyelid had twitched just a bit when he saw the J. Crew total, but still…

Jenna took a few swallows of coffee, broke off a bit of bagel, and tried to watch Theophilus Black without appearing as if she were watching him. It wasn't that difficult, actually — he'd already risen from the lab table where their impromptu breakfast had been laid out and was puttering around with a complicated gizmo that consisted of a multitude of wires coming out of a box covered with dials. The entire setup was connected to what looked like a seismograph. For all the attention he was currently paying her, she might as well not even be in the room.

His hair was a mess, she decided objectively. It looked as if he'd hacked away at it himself with a pair of not very sharp scissors, which was probably the simple truth. It almost touched the collar of the dark shirt he wore under his lab coat, and she guessed he kept it at that length because it wouldn't require frequent trimming, while at the same time not being long enough that it would constantly fall in his face. And somehow it helped to soften his sharp features a bit.

He glanced up then, and for a second or two his eyes met hers. She looked away at once and busied herself breaking off another piece of bagel.

"What is that?" she asked, and pointed at the gizmo. Maybe she could make him think she had been looking at the mysterious device and not at him.

His face didn't exactly fall, but somehow he seemed to deflate slightly. "An earthquake detector."

"There's no way to detect earthquakes," Jenna replied. As if the scientists at Caltech hadn't been working on that sort of thing for decades. And Theophilus Black thought he could just pull an earthquake detector out of his back pocket?

"According to whom?"

"Every seismologist I've ever interviewed," she replied. And there had been a good number of them over the years, Southern California being what it was when it came to earthquakes.

"They don't know what they're talking about." An amber light flashed on the side of the device. He smiled. "A 3.0 in sixty seconds."

"A what?"

"This area is more seismically active than you might think, what with its proximity to Yellowstone. We will have a 3.0 earthquake in less than a minute."

She crossed her arms. "You don't really think — "

And then she stopped, because she had felt it. Just a tiny tremor, nothing that a native of Southern California would even have noticed unless warned that it was coming. She looked from Black's device to the seismograph, where a small cluster of black lines told her that the machine had recorded the same small quake she'd just felt.

"That's impossible," she said.

"And yet you see that it isn't."

He gazed at her, face impassive, eyes unreadable behind the wire-rimmed glasses. If he felt any pride in his accomplishment, it didn't show.

Fine. If he didn't seem to care, then she wasn't going to let him know how impressed she actually was. And how selfish, really — he was just sitting up here on his mountain with an invention that could potentially improve the lives of millions of people, and he acted as if he hadn't done anything more exciting than call heads or tails correctly.

Well, she could play that game, too. She shrugged, then poured the last of the coffee into her mug. "Is there any more of this French roast?"


End file.
